


To Begin Again

by Temaris



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Fluff, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Memory Alteration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-28
Updated: 2015-09-28
Packaged: 2018-04-23 21:14:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4892473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Temaris/pseuds/Temaris
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peter knows less than he thought he did. Chris knows much, much more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Begin Again

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Claire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Claire/gifts).



> Happy birthday, Claire! Not quite Tyler/El Blanco, but perhaps this will please anyway :)

"Hello, Argent." Peter smirks at the hunter, and waits. Argent stares, says nothing, those piercing clear blue eyes wide with astonishment. It's an oddly innocent expression on the man's face, and Peter falters, his smile fading. This -- is not how he expected this confrontation to go.

"Peter..." Argent breathes, as though in utter wonder, and Peter shakes his head, hard. There was no blip in the hunter's heart beat, no deceit, nothing but awe.

"What of it?" he snaps. His heart isn't in it, but it seems that this newly vulnerable Chris Argent can't tell. He takes a couple of steps forwards, cups Peter's face, and breathes his name again.

"Peter, my god. You're awake."

And that -- that is completely out of left field. He looks around, thrown, trying to spot the catch. Somewhere there's got to be a punch line, or an audience waiting to shout 'Gotcha!', surely?

"Have -- have we met?" he asks cautiously. It's possible. He's known many people over the years, and sometimes he fears that his mind is not what it once was. Between the coma and the trauma of the fire there is much that he's forgotten-- but there's something about the way Chris is looking into his eyes, like he sees everything Peter is, everything he has done, good and bad, and is drinking it up, desperate and glad, like Peter standing here in front of him is a broken promise fulfilled beyond all lost hope.

"They told me you would never wake up. I--" He fumbles at his left hand, drags off a wedding ring, lets it clatter to the wooden floor; shows Peter the bare finger with its strange white band, and says fervently, "I'll get a divorce. I swear."

Peter blinks. Blinks again, and Chris freezes. Drops his hands from Peter's face to his shoulders, and peers at him, and the wonder drains away into something that settles into place like the lines in his skin are made for this look. "Ah." Argent's smile tilts downwards, fracturing first with sadness, and then with a hard twist, grief and then nothing, his face blank and grim.

"You don't remember."

"I think -- " Peter hesitates. Breathes in deep and slow, letting the scents that Chris is giving off drag luxuriantly across the back of his throat, tasting the air. He doesn't remember this man. But. "I think I would like to."

Chris' eyes snap up to his, and a smile flickers into existence for a second, maybe two, and Peter sees it, and gives it back.

Chris opens his mouth to say something but the words don't come until he's cleared his throat. Peter wonders if he is often tongue tied.

"Talia took your memories," Chris says softly. He runs a hand over Peter's hair. "She promised Gerard that she would." They are standing so close that Peter can feel Chris breathe, finds himself breathing in time.

"You remember." It's not a question. He has questions, many questions. But that is not one. He can see it in the fine crow lines and the hard grief and the banked rage.

Chris nods. "Yes," he says, voice hoarse. "Everything. I remember--"

"Everything."

Peter closes his eyes for a long moment. There was an everything then. He'd had that. One of the worst things about waking up was that he knew -- knew in his bones, in the howl and the place where the changeless change dwells -- that he'd lost his mate. He'd just thought that they had died in the fire; that his memory had been destroyed in the fire too.

He wonders if all the disasters that followed on would have happened if his mate had been there to stand by his side, to call him back and save him from whatever hellish intervention kept a werewolf in a six year coma. No feral alpha in the woods; no Scott McCall. Laura might have lived. Derek might not have had to kill, over and over.

"I can't--" He doesn't even know what he's going to say next. The whole is too vast to encompass in one pithy phrase, and he would, he would, but somehow-- "I know," he whispers. 

Chris presses a hand against his face, and Peter is leaning into it. "Yeah," Chris says softly. On impulse, Peter turns and presses a kiss into the palm of Chris' hand, and gasps at the way something in his soul rings out in triumph. Mine!, and At last! and You!

"I'm Chris Argent," Chris Argent says, soft and gentle in a way that entirely undermines that hard angled face and grim mien. "I'm your mate, Peter Hale."

Peter shivers, and steps forwards. "Pleased to meet you," he croaks out, and carefully lowers his face onto Chris' bony shoulder. Chris wraps his arms around him. and he's warm, and he can feel the world regain solid footing, an axis, a North star for him to follow all his days. "Pleased to meet you."


End file.
